Seth and Lathan carried Sophia’s body back to the temple. Seth expected it to be easier, that without blood she’d be nearly weightless, but her armor made her heavy, and her limbs, not yet stiff, flopped awkwardly. They’d lift and carry her, then rest when one of them called for it. They paused constantly to catch their breath and fold her arms over her chest.
By dawn, Seth’s muscles were stretched to the point of aching, almost worse than any training he’d had. He tried to hold in his grunts, to not feel the slick of sweat inside his armor, to steer his thoughts toward kindness. There was penance in this work, and duty to the gods or others was not often easy.
They reached the temple and placed Sophia in the courtyard.
Targ had returned, carrying the charred remains of an oar. Lathan just shook his head and laid a hand on the hound’s forehead.
“Why did you run off like that, girl?” Lathan asked.
“Why didn’t she come when you called?” Seth asked.
“We don’t command the hounds,” Lathan said. “They choose us. We’re not their masters.”
“Go sleep,” the Bishop said, breaking into the conversation. “I will watch over Sophia and build her pyre.”
“We could help,” Seth offered, despite the fog of weariness wrapping his thoughts.
The Bishop shook her head.
“This is my penance. I led us. I should have brought us all home. Go.”
Her back remained straight, but Seth could see regret and weariness in the lines around her eyes.
“Yes, Bishop,” he said.
He started to follow Lathan inside. Turning back, he saw the Bishop make the sign of Hyperion as she knelt to pray over Sophia’s body.
Seth’s stomach grumbled, and he quickened his steps to catch up to Lathan.
“We could, uh, get some food,” Seth offered. “Take some to the hounds. You could show me—”
“She was terrible,” Lathan said, cutting him off. Anger flushed his skin. “But you are almost no better. You are corrupt. The fire burns you. I will do as the Bishop commands. I will fight beside you and tolerate you as I have been ordered to, but that doesn’t make us friends.”
Seth took a step back.
“I could never be friends with the likes of you.”
Lathan spun on his heel and marched away.
Seth remained in the corridor, frozen in place, breathing hard. He’d known it was there, that the knights would never accept him, but he’d never expected to be slapped with it, to be so openly condemned.
The temple complex was all broad hallways, bright stone, and light wells. He felt exposed, with nowhere to hide his shame.
Grateful to find the barracks empty, he stripped off his armor and wiped the soot from it. The steel needed polishing and the leather joints needed oiling, but it would keep.
The Bishop had commanded him to sleep, but the loneliness, more than the pain of Lathan’s words, had worked its way too deep beneath his skin. It would prove fatal if he did not somehow rip it out.
Seth found his way back outside, to the courtyard where they kept the hounds.
Targ had returned to the pack. The hounds lay in a pile, curled together, most of them snoring.
Seth wondered what it would be like to live so simply, to just be happy, a family.
Careful not to provoke them, he kept his distance and sank to his knees, making himself smaller. He’d watch for a while then sleep as the Bishop had ordered.
A pair of golden eyes opened. The pup, Argos, uncurled from the others and stood. Though not fully grown, he already outsized most of the dogs Seth had seen.
Seth did not move. It would be a quick end, by tooth or fire, if the hounds chose to attack.
Argos padded forward. Seth remained on his knees as the pup tried to squeeze atop his lap. He curled into a ball and pressed himself down, flattening Seth to the ground.
He laughed and stroked the hound’s coat, expecting something coarse, but the golden fur was soft. Content, the pup slept, his body rising and falling with his breath.
The weight of the prior night, the labor of carrying Sophia’s body, settled onto Seth.
He woke there, on the ground, wearing his doublet, and found the light above him waning. Argos remained, but he had shifted to Seth’s side.
“I have to go,” Seth said, measuring how much of Hyperion’s light remained. If he hurried to the barracks, he’d have time to wash, to rearm, and make himself presentable.
Argos let out a yip and wagged his tail. Despite the weight in his chest, Seth smiled.
He washed his face and changed his tunic, ran damp hands through his hair, doing his best to comb its short length into some ordered shape.
The priests had arranged Sophia on a bier in the main courtyard. They waved censers, the incense filling the air with laurel and rosewood to mask what would soon come.
If the long night and full day of keeping watch had worn on the Bishop, it did not show in her stance, but Seth spied dark rings around her eyes.
She stood at Sophia’s feet, the dents and marks on her armor lending it an earned beauty. Her hair, arranged in fine twists, fell about her head and brow. The priests gathered at a distance. If any held resentment for Sophia, it did not show in their somber expressions.
Sophia had not been kind to them, no kinder than she’d been to Seth. Nor was Zale there to see her pyre. He’d been her friend. He should have been there, and Seth should have gone to check on him. He hung his head. Flawed or not, stripped of his rank or not, Zale was a Knight of Hyperion.
Lathan stood with several knights Seth did not know. Something black and red stirred in Seth’s gut at the fool he’d made of himself. Of course he was alone. He’d always be alone, even in a cadre. He was the only one like him, the only one the god’s fire burned—but Seth remembered the pup’s weight against him, the comfort of someone touching him without fear of the taint that clung to him. It struck him hard, from nowhere, an ache he hadn’t named, and Seth forced down his sudden tears. He fed them to the fire within him and let them burn away.
“Rhea, our mother in which we lay,” the Bishop intoned. She crouched, lifted a handful of dust, and walked the length of Sophia’s body, sprinkling it around her.
Sophia’s bloodless skin looked waxen. It shone slightly, ready to join the flames.
The assembled crowd repeated the Bishop’s words.
“Hyperion, the fire to light your way.”
The crowd echoed back the phrase.
They said it again, three times, and each time, the stricken part threatened to rise.
How could it not?
Every child had learned the blessing for the dead. Three gods—three lines—three invocations older than the world.
It wanted to be said.
Seth fed the echo, the memory, to the fire.
The Bishop called the flames. They fell in a column, consuming flesh and wood.
The knights burned their dead, mixed their ashes with the god’s fire, which set their spirits free. It was a necessity when they marched to war, even before the moon had died.
It took only a moment before Sophia and her pyre were consumed. Ashes drifted over the courtyard like early snowflakes. The god’s fire burned even her bones, leaving behind only her scorched armor. They’d inter that in the crypt, among the other faithful, to warn anything that rose out of the dark of what they’d face should they dare creep into the light.
Seth could only watch.
He could not help. The heat would burn him. Lathan and another knight stepped forward, doing the grim work of piling Sophia’s remaining gear upon her shield.
* * *
Seth took a seat at the long table. The other knights and priests gathered at the other end. It was so much worse this way, to be alone within a crowd. He ate quickly, chewing without really tasting. He would finish, then sleep again. He hoped the dawn and his morning penance would bring solace.
The fire rose like a bubble of heat, up his throat, in his head. Looking into his spoon, Seth could see a gleaming flicker in his eyes.
He needed to pray.
He pushed his chair back and stood.
No one asked where he was going.
Sophia had been so angry. It hadn’t been knightly behavior, but she’d also seemed so unhappy. Maybe given time and the chance she’d have found a way to let it go, to find happiness. Now she never could.
Seth did not want to be like that but wasn’t certain how to purge these feelings.
By dark the space beneath the dome remained beautiful. The brazen statues and gold cap of the altar reflected the wealth of candlelight. Seth approached the altar, ready to kneel, and found a robed figure leaning there, hands pressed flat to the ring of red marble.
Seth turned to go. He did not want Father Geldar to see him riddled with doubt.
“It is all right, Seth.” Geldar straightened. He turned, his smile slipping into place. “You must be distressed to pray by night.”
“It is nothing, Father,” Seth said, chin dipping toward the floor.
“Knights are not to lie, my boy.” He looked to the altar. “Especially not here.”
“You’re right, Father,” Seth admitted. “And you were right before. This city tests me, more than I expected. I have failed Hyperion. I have failed the Hierarch.”
Geldar put his arms on Seth’s shoulders.
“Hyperion is forgiving. You must remember that. Our lord is light. Mercy is his.”
“And the Hierarch?” Seth asked.
Geldar’s smile faltered.
“I do not know,” he said. “I have known him a long time, since he was simply Father Logrum of my order, but I do not often understand his will.”
“I don’t know how I can face him,” Seth said.
“You must. And very soon.”
Seth lifted his face to meet the Inquisitor’s eyes.
“The Hierarch is coming. I’ve word that he will arrive tomorrow.”
Seth’s heart fell.
The people here, the ones who’d attacked them, were rough. But they were also desperate. How could they not be? They lived in darkness.
Hyperion was the light. Geldar said he was merciful, but was the Hierarch?
Would he be merciful in a search for the man from the box, or would he be like Sophia?
“Seth,” Geldar said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I think I may need your forgiveness.”
“Father?” Seth asked, blinking.
“Living among monks all these years, among the old, you’ve had no company your own age. And the isolation of Teshur . . . I fear that it, that I, did not prepare you for this world.”
“I am not the knight I am supposed to be,” Seth said.
His eyes dropped to the floor, to the pattern of tiles and squares, white broken by spirals of bronze.
“I’m not talking about the knight’s path,” Geldar said. “You did not have the chance to grow as you should have.”
Seth’s face pinched with questions.
“You lack some experiences,” Geldar explained. “Ones that should be had by one your age.”
Seth remembered Lathan and flushed.
It was true. He’d never been kissed, never played games or run through the streets the way the children did here. He’d been the youngest person in the monastery by decades, and the solitude had suited him for a while, but now he could see the gap inside him, the things he’d never done or learned. It was another kind of flaw, something he lacked, but perhaps one more easily corrected.
Geldar watched him come to this conclusion. He smiled what Seth called his Inquisitor’s smile, which he wore when he’d unfurled the path of Seth’s thoughts like a scroll.
“I often think that one should not come to belief too quickly,” Geldar said, turning to regard the altar. “Phoebe’s priests kept orphans and oblates, and I think that was a mistake, to bring them up in a temple.”
Seth glanced around them, eyes darting side to side. That Father Geldar should mention her, here of all places.
“I think one should come to belief when they are older, have had the chance to live,” Geldar explained. “Then they would not pine for things they did not experience. I feel it’s that way with you, Seth. I should not have left you to be raised by the old.”
“I am sorry, Father,” Seth said. “I shall do better. I promise.”
“You misunderstand me. I am not saying that you must be a better knight, my boy. I am saying you must be a better person.”
“Are they not the same thing?”
“Somewhat,” Geldar said. “But to grow, you must first live. The knight’s path, your path, it is part of who you are, but not all of it. I think you must find out what else you can be, Seth. You may never be whole otherwise.”
“But I want to be a knight.”
“I know that’s your dream, your goal,” Geldar said. “And it is a worthy one. But I’d like you to dream bigger, to want more, to become more.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, my boy.” Geldar looked to the ring of sky visible through the oculus. “And perhaps I think of you too fondly, too much like a son, because I want happiness for you, and that requires more than mere duty and discipline.”
Geldar’s words lit a mix of things in Seth’s heart and stomach. He did not cringe from them, to do so would be dishonest.
The fire would always be inside him. It would always contend with the darkness that dwelled there too. Seth wasn’t certain he had room for another struggle. The question, the constant question, had always been which of the two would win.